Team:Wageningen UR/Collaborations

Collaborations

We collaborated with several iGEM teams, to improve our project, or to help improve theirs. These collaborations include surveys, campaigns, webinars, biobrick testing and other laboratory collaborations. These can roughly be devided into two categories:

Human Practices Collaborations

Surveys

We helped other iGEM teams in improving their project by filling in surveys, covering a wide variety of fields. We filled in surveys from iGEM BIT, Munich, Sydney_Australia, Vilnius-Lithuania, Washington and Waterloo. We hoped this helped their project a little step further into the right direction.

Ethics webinar

iGEM team Uppsala organised a series of three online webinars where five iGEM teams discuss ethical topics live on Youtube. We collaborated by participating in the Online Ethics Discussion (webinar) about ‘social responsibility’ in relation to ethics. The following topics were discussed:

  1. Responsible communication to the general public
  2. Choice of target audience
  3. Responsible choice of media to reach this target audience

We learned that although it is more profitable to show your project in a one-sided positive way, it is more important to be honest about the goal and the means of your project. In this way, your end-user can develop a fairer opinion on your product and his trust increases. Through consultation with experts on the technical and human aspects of your project, you can find out what matters most about your project, and adapt your communication to the problems and needs of your target audience. This results in your product to be most effective as well.

The webinar can be watched on Youtube.

Figure 1: Promotional poster of the Online Ethics Discussion of iGEM Uppsala.

Collaborating with iGEM Brazil

To get a better insight into the situation in Brazil with regard to viral diseases like Zika and Dengue, we contacted the iGEM teams from Brazil. Apart from reading literature and talking to experts in the western world, talking to locals can also be of great value.

Local insights

Via a Skype meeting with iGEM USP-Brazil we really got the know the local situation in Brazil. Especially the insight into the measures being taken by the government and the locals to prevent infection by mosquito-borne diseases is a valuable addition to our project. Some points that we learned: The government does not put enough effort into stopping the spreading of the diseases. It is advised to wear long sleeved shirts in the evening and at night, this is the time where the mosquitos are most active, and to spray yourself with an anti-insect solution. Moreover, the removal of still water can help reduce the mosquito populations. However, due to rainy seasons, this is almost impossible.

We also learned that in Brazil, you can go to the doctor for free. However, most doctors do not have the equipment to perform diagnostic tests. A diagnostic test for viral diseases that is cheap and can be used by these doctors would be beneficial, especially to test pregnant women or decide on treatment options.

By this Skype meeting, we realized that many people are affected by these terrible diseases, everyone in Brazil knows someone who is, or has been infected by viral diseases like Dengue or Zika. These diseases are very painful for the patients, and also have a great impact on the people close by and society in general.

Combining our projects into something bigger

The project of USP-Brazil covers fighting mosquito born diseases from the inside of the mosquito. They engineer synbiotic bacteria living in the guts of mosquitos that can fight the viruses when the mosquito is infected, so-called paratransgenesis. One issue is, however, that this synbiotic bacteria should only start to produce the toxins in infected mosquitos. Our project can be a nice addition by combining our engineered bacteria with their toxin system of the symbiotic bacteria. This fusion is then able to detect the virus with the affinity molecule on the surface, after which our downstream signaling pathway results in the activation of the symbiotic bacteria to fight the virus or kill the mosquito.

Postcard campaign

We collaborated with iGEM Cologne-Duesseldorf in their postcard campaign. This is a worldwide campaign where iGEM teams designed their own postcards, which are distributed by the organizing iGEM team all over the world. This all with the goal of promoting synthetic biology to raise public awareness. We distributed the postcard both on the Campus, as well as at the Dutch Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). In this way, both students, scientists as well as children and their parents got to takes these interesting cards home.

Figure 2: Some of the postcards we recieved from other iGEM teams all over the world.

RIVM

The RIVM, Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, is the Dutch governmental institute for public health and a safe environment. They encourage discussions about synthetic biology and the latest developments in the field. This is related to the impact of synthetic biology on their fields of specialization. Part of this is a collaboration with Dutch iGEM teams. The RIVM funded us with a grand, and encouraged us to think about safety aspects of our project and device. We, on the other hand, encouraged the public during the Kennisparade to do the same. On this day, the RIVM opened their doors to the general public, in particular children, to teach them about science. We informed the public about safe genetic modification at the “crafting with DNA“ part of the day. Communication was maintained with RIVM to track the progress of our project. You can check the result of the biosafety project on our Safety & Ethics page.

Figure 3: Our stand at the RIVM Kennisparade.

Rathenau Institute

The Rathenau Institute is an organization aiming to pinpoint and solve today's questions on science, technology, and society. It also has an active role in informing policymakers and society on these problems and possible solutions.An important part of their portfolio is synthetic biology. The Rathenau Institute collaborated with all Dutch iGEM teams for their “Guide to Integrated Human Practices” workshop in The Hague to share their expertise.

The workshop consisted of several parts. First, the “speeddates” with experts on several human practices related fields. Each iGEM team got to practice presenting their case to these experts, followed by a short discussion and a question round. We got some very interesting feedback.

For example, experts advised us to get into contact with end-users, as well as NGOs, and to take advantage of the expertise present at the Wageningen University. He emphasized that, in order for a cheap and new diagnostic to be developed, it has to be both novel and successful. A good engagement will be the factor for success. Wieke Betten, from the Athena Institute, said it is important for us to specify the disease we are tackling, and which population is affected the most. Other experts agreed, a clear, coherent and closed idea is needed for people to understand the aim of the project. In this way, we can combine both specificity and modularity of the device.

After these speed dates we got an introduction to the iGEMers Guide to The Future tool, developed by the Rathenau Institute. This very nice tool has exercises to facilitate human practices research for iGEM teams. For example, it contains guidelines for stakeholder brainstorming sessions, getting into contact with possible end-users and how to format techno-moral analysis of your syn-bio project. We applied the principles of The Guide to e.g. our Biosafety analysis and our future perspective analysis.

Figure 4: During the Guide to Integrated Human Practices we talked to many experts.

Wetlab Collaborations

Next to the informative collaborations listed above, we also collaborated experimentally with other iGEM teams.

Biobrick testing

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